Sunday, 27 January 2013

S.F. BARNES ON FILM

He is, famously, the only man ever to be picked for England while not playing first-class cricket – that is, while only playing MinorCounties
and league cricket. Indeed, despite an astonishing Test record – 189 wickets in
27 matches at an average of 16.43, with no fewer than 24 five-wicket hauls in
the 50 innings in which he bowled (9 for 103 being his best analysis), and 7
ten-wicket matches (a best of 17 for 159), including a world-record 49 wickets
in a series against South Africa (at the age of 40, despite pulling out of the
fifth game due, typically, to a dispute over disbursements) – Sydney
Francis Barnes played relatively little first-class cricket. Only 133
games, in fact, over a 36-year span (intermittent, of course), in which he
bagged the small matter of 719 wickets at 17.09.

The relatively scarce appearances in county cricket (just 44
games) were more the product of his own economic hard-headedness and prevailing market
forces than any lack of opportunity. Warwickshire had been reluctant to
offer him a contract despite impressive results in the Birmingham League as a
teenager, so, in an era of dilettantish amateurism, this son of a Black Country
metal-beater decided he would become a professional bowler, wherever the
highest bid took him. A living had to be earned; all other rewards would come
or go as they may. And for all that the alluring tug of nostalgia causes us to see the past as
some sort of innocent cricketing Arcadia (where in fact there was a game run as much for
the sake of gambling as the playing), so it is that Barneswas the
epitome of a deeply un-romantic view of the game – just as were the likes of WG Grace
and William Clarke before him, and are various T20 mercenaries today – a man with a keen sense of his own value
as cricketer and commercial attraction. If you paid, he bowled. And he sure did some
bowling, playing league cricket up and down the country – in his native
Staffordshire (Smethwick, Porthill Park), the Bradford League (Saltaire,
Keighley) and the Lancashire Leagues (Rishton, Burnley, Church, Rawtenstall,
Rochdale, Castleton Moor) – while of course enjoying a long career for
Staffordshire, for whom he took the small matter of 1441 wickets at 8.10
each, on the way bagging 26 of the 30 best innings analyses for the county. Sydney finally hung up
his boots in 1940, aged 67, after a season spent with Stone in the North Staffordshire
Wartime League.

As for the man, he was, by all accounts, a remote and cussed
soul off the field and temperamental on it, where he was remorselessly and near-monomaniacallydriven in
the pursuit of wickets and sharp-tongued toward captains who placed unnecessary
obstacles in the way. Cardus said that “a chill wind of antagonism
blew from him even on the sunniest day,” and his slightly pitted eyes, prominent brow, and cheekbones like onions no doubt added to his severe, forbidding aura. Yet beyond
his lack of affability and general disdain for social niceties, what was it that made
him such a fearsome proposition, so good that he not only made Cricinfo’s
all-time England XI* but also Richie Benaud’s Greatest XI**?

Standing an inch over six feet and with long arms, Arlott noted
that his “high delivery gave him a lift off the pitch that rapped the knuckles
of the unwary and forced even the best batsmen to play him at an awkward height”.
In addition, his large hands and spidery fingers gave him the purchase on the
ball that, in conjunction with his industrial accuracy, often made facing him a
question of when, not if… Most intriguingly, his style of bowling has been described, variously, as cutters, medium-pace, fast-medium, fast spin, even leg-spin.
Consensus is that it was all of this, with the leg-cutter his stock ball, mixed
with fast off-breaks, in-and out-swingers and constant, subtle changes of pace. Want
to judge for yourself? Well, if you have never seen the great man bowl then
fire up your imagination and draw what you can from this short clip.

It is moot just how effective he’d have been on covered
pitches; certainly, one imagines he’d have been a revelation in limited
overs cricket, with batters having to attack him, like a turbo-charged hybrid of CZ Harris, Ajantha Mendis and
latter-era SM Pollock. And whatever it was he bowled, exactly, there is no doubting he
was a genius, a freakishly consistent wicket machine whose final balance sheet
showed no fewer than 6225 wickets in all forms of cricket at the puny average
of 8.31.